


pulling some strings

by Exulansis



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Crack, F/M, I cannot emphasize enough how terrible this is, this is crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:57:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exulansis/pseuds/Exulansis
Summary: A spell gone wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChemiToo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChemiToo/gifts).



> Because you can't spell 'muppets' without s-m-u-t.
> 
> I refuse to apologize for this abomination. When I was first writing my very first fic, I mentioned that I was writing some smut for it to my dear friend, who asked me if Jareth was involved.
> 
> I laughed forever before asking her who she thought would be involved, and thus muppet smut was born.
> 
> I have about eight different things that I've been trying to write in two different fandoms, and my asshole brain said today, "this. this is the one you're going to write." So, hooray writer's block, hooray for this terrible crackfic, and hooray for muppet smut (the writing of which made me feel exponentially filthier than writing regular smut).
> 
> PS: Jareth is still involved. Loopholes.
> 
> * * *

“Now, don’t get upset-“

“Don’t get upset? Don’t get _upset??_ ”

He winced as she shrieked - or, rather, tried to wince and found that his face was oddly static.

Which, given the circumstance, wasn’t exactly a surprise.

“I don’t have _time_ for this right now,” she wailed, trying to lift her arms and finding herself oddly-proportioned and all tangled up in what looked like fishline.

“It’s all right,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone. He hadn’t had cause to do much soothing over the course of his long, long life: a king, after all, does not _soothe_. “I’ll set us back to rights in no time at all, and then I’ll take the time that I’ve saved and roll you right back so that it’s as if you hadn’t been gone at all!”

“Time,” she said tightly, “is not a luxury that we all have in quite as many spades as you do.”

He conjured a crystal, but it rolled out of his lifeless fingers to smash into fragments on the ground at his feet. She looked up at him furiously.

“Not to worry,” he said, and stared intently at his hand. There: he was sure he’d just managed to wiggle his pinky. Hadn’t he? “Everything is all right. Just stay calm.”

“Jareth, what have you done to us?”

He tottered off toward the library, each step clicking and clacking on the shamefully dusty stone floors, and she followed him.

“How did I even end up here?”

He cleared his throat and scanned the shelves at eye level. It had to be on the second shelf. He distinctly remembered it being on the second shelf, and furthermore, if it was any higher than the third shelf, they might as well resign themselves to this new existence.

“ _Jareth_.”

"Just a small misunderstanding,” he said, trying to shake his arm free from the wires that ran from each of his extremities. “I know how much you enjoy making everything about you, but I was simply mixing up a nausea remedy and it appears that my Latin was rusty because here you are and here we are and _here_ it is, thank the heavens.”

After struggling with the spine of an old, sulfur-scented book for several seconds, the volume finally tipped from the shelf and fell, open, to the floor.

“Serendipity!” he crowed.

“It isn’t serendipity when I have a performance review at work next week and I find myself down here with you, and we’ve been turned into grotesque little marionettes. This is the opposite of serendipity. This is calamity.”

“As you so helpfully point out, we were certainly due the serendipity,” he continued, undaunted, stooping over the book.

“We look like your goblins,” she huffed. “Your hair looks like it’s made out of yarn.”

“Oh, pish. We look nothing like the goblins. We are very stately puppets. In fact, we’re just slightly shorter than before.”

“ _Yarn_."

"Why, Sarah, I would never say anything of the sort about your hair. I think you look as lovely as ever.”

“Your eyebrows look like pieces of felt,” she said flatly, but before he could squawk indignantly (undoubtedly something like _but I, being an_ aesthete, _Sarah, bear_ aesthetically _shaped pieces of felt_ ), his mouth fell open as he stared at the page. “What?”

“It seems we’ve managed to get ourselves into quite a predicament.”

“ _You._ _You_ have managed to get us into quite a predicament."

He shifted his weight from tiny booted foot to tiny booted foot, and, to his credit, looked incredibly sheepish.

“What.”

“The spell is reversed via copulation.”

“ _What??_ ” It would have been a spit-take if she’d had anything to spit, but her mouth was dry as dust. “You brought me down here and turned me into a puppet so you could get into my pants?”

He blinked. “It wounds me to know that you think so little of me. I certainly would rather our copulation happen in our usual bodies. Not because I don’t think you look lovely. It’s just that I’m far more accustomed to the old one.”

“You’re really not joking about this.”

“I’m really not. It’s a good thing you’re wearing a skirt, because I’m not sure my fingers are currently dextrous enough to undo pants.”

She huffed. “If your fingers aren’t nimble enough to undo a button, I don’t imagine this is going to be very much fun for either of us.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, and then his hand was sliding clumsily along her cheek and along back into her hair. He tilted his head. “Your hair is lovely. A bit rubbery, perhaps, but glossy as ever.”

“ _Jareth_ ,” she warned, but made no move to back away. Instead, she leaned in, just a touch, though he couldn’t know for sure whether or not it was because she was having trouble maintaining her balance. Her flat green eyes turned back to him as she solved the mystery. “My center of gravity is not where it used to be.”

He was probably imagining the hitch in her voice, but he pulled her toward himself anyway, pressing his lips to hers. It was an unyielding, cold kiss, but she made a very soft sound - a sound rather like the quiet protest of a squeaking toy that has just been half-heartedly stepped on - and then managed to hook her hands beneath his coat.

With his other hand, he reached beneath her skirts, brushing up awkwardly against the cleft of her legs, where he found some less-than-masterful seam work but otherwise smooth planes of fabric. The back of his hand skimmed along it, and he was surprised to hear another quiet squeak from her throat.

She looked terribly embarrassed - or at least as embarrassed as her features would allow for conveyance, given their limited range of motion. “I don’t usually sound - _eep!_ \- like this, I promise.”

“Hush, Sarah,” he said with a chuckle, rotating his wrist. She jerked against him, rigid fingers fumbling against the material of his shirt. “I think we might be able to make this work, after all.”

“It’s nice,” she said, her voice whistling breathlessly in her throat, “that we’re afforded this generosity of sensation, at least, because I’m sure - _awp!_ \- that this would not feel nearly as nice if we were still human - or whatever you are.”

He pressed his fingers up against the seam. “Not to worry. If we were in our usual bodies, you would be floating in ecstasy.”

“Good to see that your confidence remains unshakable.” She maneuvered stiff hands to his pants and began to disrobe him with a combination of brute force and sheer will. “I’m assuming - _wooh-eee!_ \- that it’s not going to be enough to rub at each other, so let’s get it over with.”

“I’m not partial to the library,” he said, “but as long as we’re here, we might as well make use of one of the desks. Heaven knows they haven’t seen any action in aeons.”

She moved briefly away from him until he found himself jerked along, uncomfortable tugging at each of his limbs - her shoulder snapped back. “We’re tangled,” he said, half-laughing as he lifted his arms to reveal a snarl of wire connecting them.

“Then we’d better try to be quick about it,” Sarah huffed, and shuffled with him in tandem to the nearest desk. With a substantial amount of his help, she hoisted herself up onto the nearest chair, comically dwarfed by its perfectly regular size, disturbing a thick sheet of dust that billowed thickly into the air around them, falling in unsettling tendrils and clumps.

Jareth, who had managed to hop-shuffle along in her wake, already had his pants around his knees, which was in itself an impressive feat - they hadn’t grown any looser through his transformation. He pushed her skirt up and considered the expanse of flesh-colored fabric. “It occurs to me,” he said slowly, “that I have no idea how this is supposed to happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you don’t exactly… and I’m not quite… I might need a seam-ripper, and it all just feels gratuitously wrong.”

“You _what?_ ” she squawked.

He paused, examined his range of motion - the fishline was becoming a burden - and chanced a glance downward at himself, and then he cried out in despair. “Don’t think less of me for this, Sarah.”

“I could never think less of you than I do at this moment,” she said, flatly, from where she lay on her back, skirt hiked up about her hips, but with effort, she managed to cant them upward and he thought maybe he could make the angle work, after all.

He leaned in, pressed himself against her, blindly, and felt her seam open up to him, enveloping him in what felt like - and in fact, was exactly - perfectly room-temperature synthetic stuffing.

Sarah squeaked in response, and he moved, just a little bit, and abruptly found himself rather weak in the knees. Slumping forward, he braced himself against the chair, and when his hand touched the wood, the ensuing clack was muted and, really, altogether more of a thump.

“It’s - nicer - than I expected,” he ground, and managed to wet his lips. His hips were moving slightly more freely, and he thought he could see an arch beginning in Sarah’s lower back. He reached forward, between their bodies - this time he could see his fingers move very clearly - and through the buttons of her sensible shirt, and his palm touched a breast that was just-this-side of warm.

“I think it’s working,” she gasped, and then, “ _eeeeerrrr -_ oh.... oh... _oh…_ ”

He was moving more fluidly now, his hips pressing snugly to hers as he ground forward.

“You feel - bigger -”

“I should hope so -”

“Oh - ouch! Jareth, wait -”

Sarah had outgrown the chair: it no longer supported her body where she lay across it; the edge of it dug unforgivingly into her back and her shoulders were drooping toward the ground. They parted from each other, somewhat reluctantly, navigating what seemed like miles of criss-crossed wiry tethers, and then she righted herself and sat upon the desk. “I’m sorry that I said your hair looked like yarn,” she said, reaching for him. "It _did_ look like yarn, but I'm still sorry I said it."

He sat back into the chair that she had been occupying, and she moved forward, bunching her skirt above her hips, to sink slowly onto him with a quiet exhalation of breath, some silent oath that fell prettily from her flushed lips - and no squeaking whatsoever. With renewed mobility, his arms bent easily at the elbows and his hands rested at her waist - the rhythmic rise and fall of her hips stoked their shared pleasure higher - higher - they gasped for breath: she, hot and wet; he, hard yet pliant - until they shuddered against each other, damp clothes and mussed hair and very real flesh and blood and thundering hearts.

The wires fell away as they straightened themselves back out.

“So - you can give me my time back?” she asked, surveying her wrinkled skirt partly in irritation, partly in wicked amusement.

“I’m not a complete knave,” he said, and shelved the book. She watched as the hands on the nearest clock crept backward. “It was barely half an hour, but I am nothing if not a man of my word.”

The second hand, with some effort, ground to a halt.

“Who’s sick?” she asked.

“Mmm?” He was shimmying back into his pants, distracted by the effort of the job.

“You said - anti-nausea spell?”

“Did I?” he asked, knocking the tip of his boot against the desk. “I may not have been _entirely_ honest about the spell's origins or intentions, but I can assure you, I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.” He waved his hands around vaguely, hoping to convince her.

She gave him a look that would have made lesser men quail before her.

“Well, I didn’t mean to get mixed up in contingency spells and sex magic, anyway,” he said, one corner of his mouth curling upward. “I merely thought it would be nice to see you again. I was bored.”

“Your timing leaves a little to be desired.”

“Why, Sarah,” he said, with a wolfish grin, “it's lucky, then, that my timing is whatever I choose it to be.”

“Cheating,” she said, but allowed him to kiss her once more while the second hand of the clock quivered, ever deadlocked in his lazy reordering of time.


End file.
